This invention relates generally to oscillators more particularly to complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) oscillators.
As is known in the art, oscillators are used to generate a signal having a frequency selected in accordance with an applied control signal (i.e., a voltage controlled oscillator, VCO). One technique used to fabricate such VCO is with a ring of serially connected inverters as described in FIG. 3 of an article entitled "A 300-MHZ CMOS Voltage-Controlled Ring Oscillator" by S. K. Enam and Asad A. Abidi, IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1990. Each inverter in the ring-VCO includes an n channel transistor (nMOS transistor) connected in a totem pole arrangement to a p channel transistor (pMOS transistor). The gates of the nMOS and pMOS transistors are connected together to provide a common input for the inverter and the drain and source paths pMOS and nMOS transistors are connected together to provide an output for the inverter. The ring VCO has an inner ring with an odd number of inverters and an outer ring, fed by an output of the inner ring, having an even number of inverters. The outer and inner rings feed a pair of transistors having gates connected to a control voltage. The pair of transistors are arranged to provide a potentiometer which vectorially adds the signals produced by the inner and outer rings in a proportion selected by the control signal. The inner ring provides a signal which oscillates at the highest frequency of the VCO and the outer ring produces a signal which oscillates at the lowest VCO frequency. The pair of potentiometer-arranged transistors produce an output signal having a frequency intermediate between these two extremes. The frequency of oscillation is determined by the total propagation delay through each ring and the control voltage. More particularly, the transistors in each inverter circuit are driven periodically at the frequency of oscillation into complementary conducting/nonconducting states. Because pMOS transistors switch between conducting/non-conducting states slower than nMOS transistors, the oscillation frequency of the inner ring, i.e., the maximum frequency, is constrained by the gain-bandwidth capability of the pMOS transistors.